Magdalena Abakanowicz’s (born 1930) Space of Unknown
Growth spans the area of 2, 012 square metres. The range of massive
boulders, and twenty-two variously sized man-made forms, create an impressive
landscape, a space for experience. The artist is always looking for indefinite
forms. Commenting on her work, she compares these forms to, “Life filed buds
bursting in spring, ... stacks of hay in summer ... like unopened blooms”, and
adds, “We can also find such outlines in the human body ...” Everyone gives ones
own meaning to these anonymous objects. According to Abakanowicz, many things
can not be explained. “You open the door and find another behind, you open that
one and find one more, which you can not open at all ...”

Since she began exhibiting outside Poland in the
1960s, the artist has traveled widely round the world. She has even visited
Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Mexico, and has taken part in a great number of
international exhibitions. The artist is interested not only in contemporary
art, but also in the art of primitive societies. The scale of Abakanowicz’s art
is grand, according to art critic Jasia Reichardt, her vision appropriate to
nothing less than the creation of new stars and planets.

Michael Brenson writes about Abakanowicz’s importance
to the history of modern sculpture and remembers, that, “as soon as I immersed
myself in Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work, it was clear to me that one of its most
remarkable characteristics was its ability, like the voice of Luciano Pavarotti
or Billie Holiday, to carry within it an entire culture. .... Abakanowicz is
very Polish, yet she belongs to the world.”